Vote fraud confirmed:
US Count Votes has come out with a remarkable paper authored by a
committee of twelve, most of them highly-qualified mathematicians and
statisticians from major universities. This study highlights the
serious ramifications of the exit poll discrepancy while demolishing
the "chatty Dem" theory (more properly known as the "reluctant
responder" theory), which remains the official explanation for that
incongruity.

The only possibility left is vote alteration.

Alas,
this important scientific study has yet to make an impact. The media,
distracted by the Pope’s death, hasn’t noticed that Uncle Sam is also
facing the Reaper. The only significant coverage of this report has
appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal.

For those of you who are paying attention, the full analysis is here. An "executive summary" is here.

And if you’d like an ultra-brief summary of the summary:

The
exit poll discrepancy in the 2004 American presidential election was
the largest in the poll’s history — about five-and-a-half percent. The
odds against the polls being so wrong are roughly one in a million. The
"chatty Dem" theory is nonsense: Responses to the pollsters were higher in Republican strongholds — where the exit poll discrepancies were widest.

Answer that, Mr. Mitofsky.

I
suppose the only (weak) counter-argument he might offer would be along
these lines: For some reason, Kerry supporters in Bush strongholds —
but not in Democratic precincts — were remarkably eager to
push all others aside and commandeer the pollsters. Not only is this
scenario counterintuitive, it goes against all previous experience. It
also goes against Mitofski’s own data.

Once again, I would
remind readers of another oddity besetting these troubling exit polls:
On November 2, 2004, pollsters did not restrict inquiries to the votes
cast on that date. They also asked voters about the 2000
election. 43% of the respondents said they had chosen Bush on that
previous occasion, while 37% reported having cast a ballot for Al Gore.

But Gore WON the popular vote. This simple fact — which even math illiterates should be able to comprehend easily — proves that the exit pollsters favored Republicans, not Democrats.

Author
Josh Mitteldorff, in the executive summary of the US Count Votes
report, does not favor the theory that touch screen voting had greater
error rates than did punch cards. However, on page 18 of the report
proper, we see data suggesting that mechanical voting machines had a
significantly higher error rate than did paper ballots.

How to
resolve this seeming contradiction? I remind readers that punch cards
are run through a computerized central tabulator — the "mother
machine," as Teresa Heinz-Kerry once put it. Absentee ballots and
provisionals must be counted by hand.

The issue of touch screen vs. non-touch screen voting reminds me of another important study — the Leto-Hoffman study of
Snohomish County, Washington. This investigation revealed that the
ultra-close gubernatorial contest in that state would have been won
more decisively if the vote were cleaner. Unfortunately,
machine-counted votes had many more problems (to put the matter
delicately) than did absentee and provisional ballots. Also see this account in the January 26-February 1 Seattle Weekly:

Their
study findings, issued in December, got lost among the recount chaos.
"I personally am surprised that the Republicans are shouting fraud from
the rooftops," Lehto [sic] says, "and yet the Lehto and Hoffman study
is non-news for the mainstream media."

This report, if read
carefully, is damning. I was particularly intrigued by their
investigation of Diebold’s strange insistence that the power cords for
the voting machines be "daisy chained." Most people don’t realize that
data can be transmitted over power lines.

Returning our attention to the new US Count Votes report:

So far, the best analysis of this analysis comes from Newsclip Autopsy. Highly recommend reading.

Here’s an important excerpt:

The
exit polls for the 2004 election not only tabulated views from the
Presidential election. It also received information about the voters
intentions for the U.S. Senate races. Guess what?! Yup. Strangely
enough, the exit polls were far more accurate at determining who would
win for Senator. As history shows us, there is no precedent for
widespread "ticket-splitting" in other elections. That is, if you vote
democratic for President, there is an overwhelming probability that you
would vote democratic for the Senator. US Vote Counts summarizes this
peculiarity this way:

"There is no logic to account for non-responders or missed voters when discussing thedifference in the accuracy of results for the Senate versus the presidential races in the same exit poll."

No
logic, indeed. Unless this is a nation where "multiple personality
disorder" is present in epidemic proportions!!! To allay that
particular fear, this report confirmed another startling finding which
was observed in a previous report by the same group. Exit polling
accuracy was dependent on whether the election ballots were
hand-counted or not!! This is a highly significant finding, considering
that, in Ohio, only a non-random 3% of the ballots were hand recounted.
Many of these instances had recounts which were different from the
machine counts.

And how did Ken Blackwell, the corrupt Ohio Secretary of State, respond to all this?

"What
are you going to do except laugh at it?" said Carlo LoParo, spokesman
for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who’s responsible for
administering Ohio’s elections and is a Republican candidate for
governor. "We’re not particularly interested in (the report’s
findings)."

There you have it: Laughter directed at
science. Laughter directed at ten PhDs. As though placing the topic
behind a curtain of guffaws replaces the need for a counter-argument.

Once more, the Republicans assail Reason itself.

Please
do everything you can to publicize the work of US Count Votes. This
important scientific analysis should be leading all other headlines on
Buzzflash, Bush Watch, Air America, Daily Kos...not to mention the New
York Times, CBS, ABC and the rest of the mainstream media. Alas, even
the wonderful blog by John Conyers has not yet covered this report.

Let’s make sure the riff-raff can’t vote: Conyers’ blog does

direct our attention to important developments in Georgia, Indiana, and
other states. In order to combat the alleged epidemic of non-existent
registered voters (a "spin point" the G.O.P. has pushed for many
months), Georgia will now tighten identification requirements. The
result, of course, will be depressed turn-out among minorities and the
elderly.

— Georgia would be the first state not to permit an alternative to a photo ID, such as a signed affidavit.

—
another provision of the bill, supposedly designed to prevent voter
fraud, would totally eliminate the requirement that a voter seeking an
absentee ballot state a reason for wanting it, even though there is far
greater concern about the use of absentee ballots for fraudulent
purposes. If measures like this pass, it becomes all the more
imperative to enact voting reform legislation that I and others have
introduced to protect voting rights.

— "Neither Georgia’s
secretary of state nor the secretary of state of Indiana, where a voter
identification measure has been under consideration, could point to an
allegation of voter identification fraud."

— The AARP has observed that more than a third of Georgians over 75 lack a valid driver’s license.

—
The bill would have a disproportionate impact on rural voters, given
that Georgia’s 159 counties have only 53 driver’s license offices, and
ten of them are in metropolitan Atlanta.

Readers of Cannonfire will recall that I’ve been predicting this very development. Indeed, the whole point
of the American Center for Voting Rights — the now-notorious
"non-partisan" Republican front group — has been to whip up hysteria
over the misleading issue of false registrations.

As we have noted earlier: Anyone can send in a fake registration form. If
such acts have indeed taken place (the ACVR cites unofficial reports of
registration forms bearing flagrantly bogus names), the listed party
affiliation does not necessarily tell us who to blame. No evidence
indicates that a single "fake" voter ever cast a ballot for Kerry; the
exit poll discrepancy offers a profound argument against this notion.

We thus come to that famous question: Cui bono? Who benefits?

A
Democratic registration form bearing a ridiculous "joke" name can only
buttress the arguments of Republicans who favor the enforcement of
strict photo ID requirements at the polls. Such requirements will make
participation difficult for the poorest sectors of our electorate. Many
poor people have expired driver’s licenses, or no licenses at all —
and many may not relish the prospect of acrimonious interaction with
cops at the poll booth.

(By way of comparison: My local library switched from a policy of allowing anyone
access to the internet to a system which allows only official library
card holders to surf the web. The result: Drastically reduced usage of
the computers. Since cards go only to those with addresses and photo
ID, the homeless lost much-needed access to email accounts and websites
helpful to the poor.)

By asking "cui bono?," we can
see the outlines of the scheme. Through the simple expedient of filling
out a few bogus registration forms, far-sighted Republican operatives
will now be able to fulfill their long-held goal of keeping the
"riff-raff" away from the engines of democracy.

It was definitely "Chatty Dem" theory. As a conservative, I went to my polling place, avoided the bright camera lights and sloppily dressed libs screaming "don’t be stupid voting for Bush" only 18ft. from the front door. I thought they had to be like a mile away or something.

Anywho, when I emerged, other liberal troglodytes tried to eschew from me my vote. I told them to get lost, it’s private, and my choice.

I’ll bet, and be right, that many closet conservatives did exactly the same thing. I had to keep my mouth shut at lunch about my choices, as it would always become a "call out the conservative" type of affair and I would have to answer for everything Bush/Cheney/Rove ever did in life. I obviously could not, so I kept my mouth shut and nodded like a filthy liberal, knowing all to well I was betraying myself in order to stay employed.

Vote Alteration is the exact opposite of Occam’s Razor. Vote Alteration only appeals to losers and conspiracy theorists.

In 61% of the elections since I was born, a conservative was put in office. 39% went to liberals. Oh, and a fine choice of liberals were offered to us: Johnson, Carter, Clin-ton. Do you really think with choices like these, or worse the liberal choices that "didn’t make the grade," that you have a freakin’ chance?

Thank you for electing Howard Dean to the DMC chair — and saving 2008 for Hillary. Another 4 conservative years in 2008 methinks.

There is another name for the "Chatty Dem" theory, it’s the "Embarassed Republican" theory.

Thank you for confessing. Your admission will be looked upon favorably when the war crimes, corruption and plutocracy of the present administration are eventually investigated.

If you were smarter, you would realize that your statements neither refute nor cast doubt on the seriousness of the statistical discrepencies of the 2004 election. The FDA approves drugs with less statistical evidence.

Only those opposed to democracy want to substitute exit-polls for election returns. And to the deep-thinker who posted on this string with a bunch of tired anti-American stereotypes, do you have anything to add other than rank xenophobia?

You cannot disprove, You cannot win the argument so you insult. How sad.

The fact that the exit polls were so far out in only the precincts without an audit trail, where the software (which could easily intercept, delete or add votes) was written by GOP supporters that announced ahead of time that they would deliver the votes of the crucial state to the president and in ONLY those places had a descrepancy between the presidential and senetorial election by a statistically almost impossible amount is so suspiscious enough to be evidence of fraud beyond reasonable doubt in my opinion.

In the words of Joseph Stalin, "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." These very words are haunting us in the U.S. today. It is not so much whether you voted conservative or liberal, it is a matter of did your vote count the way you wanted it to. With the outcome of the 2004 Election being extremely crazy i.e. Wyoming had a 106% turnout, many precincts in Ohio had more votes that voters for a total of 93,000 extra votes, one really has to wonder what happened. Combine this with the E-voting machine vendors like Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia Pacific, Accenture and SAIC-companies that either are heavily owned by ex-CIA agents, Generals, Admirals, or ties to Enron, or busy renewing $195,000,000 contracts with the Saudi Royal Navy and it is very easy to question the authenticity of this last election. The Exit Polls were off that is a fact, but can you trust these companies with your vote whether or not it is liberal or conservative. There are bills in the U.S. Congress requiring more security and a paper trail and Americans need to get behind them in order to make our next election process more secure. What it requires is that Americans wake up, get off the couch and understand that yes, someone could have rigged the election and very easily as well...and for those who believe it didn’t happen this time...then for future elections. The real issue is do you want your vote to be privatized by corporations with agendas? Before you say anything about "conspiracy theory" research e-voting machines and these companies first.

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